Role Playing Games (RPGs) provide a powerful mechanism for performing many activities in fully immersive virtual environments known as metaverses. One of the most famous examples of such a metaverse is the program referred to as Second Life®. While these programs are often referred to as “games,” they are nonetheless highly practical devices used in education, psychotherapy and in benchmarking to name just a few applications. Those involved with virtual universes, and particularly developers of them, make a distinction between “games” and what they refer to as “serious games.”However, in general, Role Playing Games typically comprise two principal elements: scenography and a script. The scenography is related to the stage, the scenes and the costumes. The script is related to roles, actions, dialogs and events.
A play is usually divided into acts and scenes. Different scenery is associated with each scene. Each scene may be quite complicated and may contain both active and inactive elements. Active elements may interact with avatars, whereas inactive elements are used by avatars but have no inherent automatic programmed behavior. An avatar is a graphical representation that a user selects that other users can see, often taking the form of a cartoon-like human but with increasing desire to render the depiction in more realistic fashion. Active elements are usually found in specific states in a time sequence. Once a role playing game is started, it is often desirable to rapidly change the scenery as the play proceeds. Since a scene is made of many objects in specific positions and states, it often takes a lot of time and manual effort to remove the previous scenery and something to do with new scenery elements.
The present invention is seen to have many uses and applications. In particular, it may be used in an education environment for simulations related to on-the-job training. In cinematic applications, it is useful for providing a substitute for storyboard production. In an architectural environment, it is useful for simulating the flow of people in malls and in other locations, both public and private. In a business environment, it is applicable for use in serious game playing, role playing, and in the analysis of user interaction scenarios.
Note that, throughout this disclosure, for clarity of presentation only, reference is made to an individual or avatar, which is a digital representative of the individual. However, it should be noted that this term not only applies to an individual, but to any computerized processes that may execute on behalf of the individual, using the same credentials and capabilities of the individual that owns/controls the process. In general, this embodies many forms, such as prescheduled, automatically running maintenance processes, system level processes (owned by the system administrator), etc. In all cases, this process is treated like an avatar, with the same inputs and outputs, regardless of whether the credentials come directly from an individual or from a computerized process acting in his or her stead.
From the above, it is therefore seen that there exists a need in the art to overcome the deficiencies and limitations described herein and above.